Sup6-E vs Sup720

[lxcollin1]

Hello,

I'm trying to decide between a Cat6K w/ Sup720 without dCEF vs a Cat4500 w/ Sup6-E. When camparing forwarding performance, the Sup6-E (250Mpps) seems to have better processing power than the Sup720 (48Mpps). Is this true?? In other words, unless I'm using DFC's, will the Sup6-E outperform the 720?

Thanks,

Lehi

[Joseph W. Doherty]

For just the forwarding performance of the supervisor alone (no 6500 line card DFCs), yes the sup6-E provides a higher PPS rate. However, the sup720 (15 or 30 Mpps - depends on line cards installed) provides more fabric bandwidth, 720 Gbps vs. 320 Gbps. The sup720 also supports more hardware and software features than the 4500, so you might want to consider more than supervisor performance.

[Giuseppe Larosa]

Hello Lehi,

as Joseph has noted you need to take in account also features.

Other collegues have reported that Sup6-E is really weak in features:

lack of netflow support

lack of NAT support

sup720 supports all this and also NAT giving you potential for L3 usage.

see

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/partner/products/hw/switches/ps4324/prod_models_comparison.html

or

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/switches/ps4324/prod_models_comparison.html

Hope to help

Giuseppe